Disability Symposium 2022 - Disability & Well-Being: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives
With Joel Michael Reynolds, Joseph Stramondo, and Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry.
New technologies, emergency situations, and scarce resources confront our policy- makers with hard questions and moral dilemmas concerning people with disabilities. An important factor in making decisions regarding how to best respond to disability needs and redistribute limited social resources is how the well-being or the quality of life of people with disabilities will be evaluated.
Testimony by disabled people concerning the relationship between their experiences and overall well-being has long been an object of social scientific and humanistic study. For instance, the “intuitive horribleness” of certain impaired states has often been contrasted with testimonial evidence suggesting that people in such states do not in fact experience their lives as horrible. Disability activists that engage with bioethical issues have claimed that the field regards their lives as having less value, and disability theorists have problematized assessments of well-being in end-of-life and crisis contexts.
